


Preoccupied

by Beth Harker (Beth_Harker)



Category: Newsies (1992)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 08:39:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17220599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beth_Harker/pseuds/Beth%20Harker
Summary: David tries to figure out his feelings towards Jack, and sort out how attraction works for him in general.





	Preoccupied

It hadn’t taken long for David to become preoccupied with Jack Kelly, and it hadn’t taken much. Goodness knew David wasn’t usually one to fall for people who shoved into him and didn’t apologize, especially not ones who flashed bright, arrogant smiles in his face. He wasn’t one to fall for people in general. Not anyone, ever. In his entire sixteen years of life, David had never before lost sleep fantasizing about sharp hazel eyes and broad shoulders, or any other inconvenient mix of attractive features, for that matter.

And things could’ve gone so much differently than they had. They really could’ve, and maybe they should’ve. A thousand scenarios strung their way through David’s imagination, like an infestation of spiderwebs, all of them tangling around a split second of time, a thoughtless collision in a city square. The Delanceys might have caught Jack and beaten him up on the spot, and Jack might never have noticed David. Whatever stupid impulse Jack lived his life by might not have led him to seek out a partnership with David that morning, and the strike might not have happened. Papa might not have ever messed up his arm and began the whole thing. There were literal heaps of might’ve beens that weren’t, and in their place David was left with this lousy infatuation that he didn’t need and didn’t want.

It was the same with Sarah, except that Jack had never nearly dislocated her shoulder, and Jack had never taught her how to sell papers, and Jack had (hopefully) never pushed her up against the wall behind the World building (to shout and argue, but that didn’t matter). Also, Sarah had fallen for boys before. She’d scribbled half a dozen surnames for herself into her diary, and asked David in confidence whether or not he agreed with her assessment that so and so from synagogue was very clever and nice. David didn’t begrudge her that (except for the tiny piece of him that did, because getting to know people had always come so much easier to Sarah than it had for him, and he couldn’t quite understand her methodology.). He felt sorry when mama whispered to her that Sarah needed to guard her reputation around Jack and the newsies, even though Papa refused on ideological grounds to disapprove of the relationship or his daughter’s involvement in the strike.

David could always tell when Sarah spent time with Jack. She’d come in from the rooftop glowing, or she would go out to the rooftop with a wicker basket of food. A lot of times David would walk home with Jack, and then he and Sarah would change places, and she’d be the one at Jack’s side. That was how it was meant to be, and David knew full well that Sarah deserved all that and more (a giddy voice in the back of David’s mind shouted that Jack wasn’t good enough for his sister, and David rolled his eyes at it. He wouldn’t be as self serving as that.).

David tried to focus his attentions elsewhere, just to see if he could. He forced himself to look carefully at the people he met, and the people that he knew, starting with the girls. He told himself over and over that Sarah’s friend Golda had magnificent hair, until she whispered to Sarah in Yiddish that her brother was staring at them, and David died a little inside. He paid attention to the ladies in lace dresses that he passed on the street, until he started to wonder for the first time in his life whether lace was more or less itchy than wool. He observed how the other newsies would hoot and whistle when pretty girls walked by, but it just made David think that it would be terrible to have strangers yell things at you as you were trying to go about your day. He couldn’t even bring himself to go through the motions.

Turning his attention towards the boys he knew was more frightening, but David was sure that he had to try, or else he’d be stuck in the same place he was now for the rest of his life. David reasoned that maybe he had never seen anything that caught his attention in his classmates because he didn’t like most of them; whatever their actual features may be, to David they looked like the kind of people who would taunt him in the schoolyard, and very little else. The newsies were a different story.

None of them were bad looking. David was sure of that. They looked like friends. If they showered more they would look like clean friends, if they bought new clothes they would look like well-dressed friends, and if they all decided to be like Jack and don cowboy hats and red bandannas they would look like ridiculous friends who were driven by an unhealthy sense of escapism.

Out of all the newsies besides Jack, Mush was David’s favorite, because he was very nice without a hint of duplicity. When David tried to imagine kissing him, however, he only felt bored. Not queasy or uncomfortable, just entirely disinterested.

Bumlets was another one who was easy to look at. David didn’t know much about him at all. What he could see was that Bumlets was quiet and confident. Whenever he noticed David, he gave him a quick smile and then went about his business. David always returned the gesture. Sometimes he thought, that with effort, Bumlets could fascinate him. The problem there was that he didn’t want to make that effort. It wasn’t any good for him. One misplaced interest was more than enough.

If David had a diary like Sarah, he could write all this down. As things were, all he had were pages of school notes, that he hadn’t touched in nearly two months. Summer had ended, fall had begun to begin, and David’s papa’s arm was still healing.

One night David stayed up and reviewed his school notes anyway, just to have something to think about. He fell asleep at the desk in the bedroom that he shared with his sister. She was the one who woke him up in the morning, before Mama could see what he’d done and worry. David guessed that she was also the one who had spread the blanket over his shoulders while he slept.

“We need to talk,” Sarah told David, before he could leave the house for work that morning. “As soon as you get home tonight.” She sounded serious, and though she was not the one who had slept at her desk all night, her eyes were tired. David swallowed back his worry, and nodded.

He wasn’t really surprised when it turned out to be about him and Jack.


End file.
